Friday, July 30, 2010

Every state has the constitutional authority, even the obligation to protect it’s [sic] citizens from any threat to the safety of their person or their property.

The Court in this case ignores the real constitutional question in an attempt to justify the federal government’s failure to secure our borders and create a realistic, consistent, easy to understand path to citizenship. We need to encourage immigrants who still desire the freedom and opportunity the United States is supposed to offer to enter this country legally and, further, to become productive and contributing members of the community.

The judge did not enjoin most of the law, rather than repeat all of those sections here, I suggest you just go and read the decision; the un-enjoined sections are referred to in the first few pages. Really, they are easy to find.

But here’s what did get enjoined:

The court enjoined these provision of the law on the grounds of federal preemption. Preemption is based in turn on the Supremacy Clause, the part of the Constitution that Tom Emmer and the nullifiers don’t believe is there. But it is; it’s in Article VI:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Here’s the Supreme Court of the United States, ruling on a Pennsylvania law to require aliens in the state to register with state authority:

You can see, boys and girls, that there is very little new under the sun.

Stonewall engages in hyperbole when he says that the Arizona decision prevents the state from protecting citizens from all threats to “the safety of their person or their property.”

If an undocumented alien commits a violent or property crime, s/he can be arrested, charged, and convicted like anyone else.

You have to wonder what other undesirables that Stonewall would like to round up and take off the streets, just because he thought they “might” do something.

Tom Emmer is a putrefying bag of resentment and prejudice, a demagogue, and an unapologetic enemy of civil liberties. He appeals to the baser side of our nature, certainly not the “better angels” that Abraham Lincoln spoke of.

Emmer deserves only our contempt; his brand of extra-constitutionalism is simple nihilism and anarchy.

Update: I forgot the thump of the tail to Emptywheel for the link to the decision.